


A Garden Enclosed

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Alpennia Series - Heather Rose Jones
Genre: Biblical Namesake, F/F, In the past everyone shares a bed, Magical Theory, Operas, Renaissance Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 22:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16396097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: Tanfrit's tombstone says she is survived by Susanna, her dearest sister, or the sister of her dearest, depending on how one expands the abbreviations. The language of affection has changed, in the last five or six hundred years.





	A Garden Enclosed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).



_Excerpted from a letter of Tanfrit to Gaudericus, 1435, translated from the Latin by Margerit Sovitre._

Dearest brother and most learned friend,

With great interest I read your last letter, in which you detailed the way the motions of the stars create a sort of tide or current affecting the course of events on this terrestrial orb. Indeed, the notion of a current strikes me as truly salient, for even the most youthful and naive petitioners of the saints recognize that the appropriateness of requests is determined by suitability both of time and of place. To choose a particular and humble example, let me note that All Saints' Day is recognized by all true and faithful Christians as the day to honor and remember those persons who, having attained the city of Heaven, have nevertheless not been recognized with a specific saintly festival. Yet only in the city of Rotenek do citizens mark the holy day by lighting candles twined and circled with red and blue. Furthermore, even the humblest of citizens knows that only before the steps of the church of Saint Challun will the lighting of such a candle draw forth the scent of heavenly lilies, and that only in the hour before dawn on All Saints' Day. The importance of precise juxtaposition of time, of place, and of the invocation of the holy saints is evident already in this most simple practice. How much more subtle are the alignments that you measure...

* * *

  
_Excerpted from a letter of Margerit Sovitre to Jeanne de Cherdillac, 1828._

The serious discussion I had planned, upon the nature of mysteries, ran ashore on the rocks of idle speculation! Could Gaudericus have been the brother of Tanfrit? Anyone familiar with humanist letters recognizes "carissime frater" as a rhetorical commonplace. I have signed twenty of my own letters "entirely yours", without entirely belonging to all those people! But the discussion was lively, and it's a joyful responsibility, to have my very own class in my very own school. I am thinking already about how to shape the reading for each student. 

But how go your own projects? I hope the state of the roads has not interfered too much...

* * *

  
_Urmai, 1827._

Serafina finds Luzie in an antechamber on the old Chasteld estate, looking at a painting. It's small, and darkened with age. That might explain why nobody sold it, when so many of the grander Chasteld possessions went to pay off debts. Serafina isn't sure why Margerit chose to display this painting: her taste runs to grander, classicizing images of Truth and Justice. Maybe it's just that this woman—it is a portrait of a woman, wearing the clothing of a century long past—has an interesting face. She has arched, plucked eyebrows, and her hair is covered in an elaborately pleated veil. That might imply modesty or vanity; Serafina doesn't know the conventions of the time. Certainly, her eyes are not modestly downcast. They're gazing straight at the viewer, dark and challenging: she might be arguing a contrast, or making a point about theology. Before her rests a white flower, its curling petals mirroring the folded veil, and two branches. One branch bears round, orange-red berries, the other acorns.

"Do you think she's a saint, or an allegory?" Luzie asks. "The plants seem symbolic somehow, though I don't recognize the berries."

"It must be a portrait. The berries are mastic"—Serafina remembers a shrub in her parents' garden, with a light evergreen scent and sticky sap—"Oh! Do you think this is Susanna?"

"As in the Bible story? Or are you thinking of Tanfrit's tombstone?"

"Both, I suppose. That's a lily, for the name Susanna. Then the oak and mastic are the ones in the story, where Daniel asks the elders which tree Susanna's lover was standing under, and they can't agree."

Luzie makes a humming sound, thinking. "She seems so forthright. When people paint the story of Susanna, she's always subdued, bashful."

"Looking down," Serafina agrees. "And then they paint the old men, leering in the background."

Luzie nods. "It's strange—I always liked the story of Susanna, but it was nothing to do with her loveliness and bathing in the garden. It was the way she was stubborn. She defied the elders, even when they threatened her."

"And the prophet Daniel listened," Serafina says.

"Yes! It's so clever, his trick with the trees. And then everyone realizes she was right all along." Luzie smiles. "It would be great fun to stage."

"Has there been a Susanna oratorio? There must have been, sometime?"

Luzie ponders. "I think I've seen music, once. Pretty, but old-fashioned, with Daniel as a soprano. I'd want him to have the deep, imposing voice, even if that meant the elders were tenors."

It's Serafina's turn to be thoughtful. "The chaste woman resisting aristocratic suitors? It's going to seem political."

"Any performance seems political, if you're looking for it. But I think"—Luzie's smile is a bit wry, here—"I can find a patron who appreciates that message." 

Luzie's tilting her head a little to the side. Serafina can tell she's already tracing out a melody.

* * *

  
_Rotenek, 1424._

Suzen is peeling chestnuts. It's fussy, tedious work, making sure all the brown bits of skin come off, but Suzen enjoys the warmth on her hands and the chance to steal a taste here and there. Chestnuts are supposed to be warming to the spirits, too. That means they'll be greatly of use to Cousin Tanfrit, who tends, lately, to trail off in the middle of sentences or sit silently gazing at invisible tapestries, and no use at all to Suzen, who spends half her time arguing with the other members of the household and the other half arguing with herself. "Cousin" isn't really accurate—Suzen has never succeeded in memorizing the chain of godparenthoods and betrothals that links her family to Tanfrit's—and Suzen thinks it sounds painfully formal. She and Tanfrit once made a game of suggesting alternatives: Mesnera, Grand Abbess, Illustrious Queen, and on the other side, Faithful Servant, Not the Best Candidate for a Dowry, and Possibly Qualified to Learn Accounting.

 _Or sister,_ Suzen thinks, _the sister of my heart._

Her actual brother is in Aosta or Lausanne as often as not, and never writes. At best, he sends her a silk ribbon or an exhortation to be diligent, as if she were still the scrawny fifteen-year-old she'd been the year their father died. Tanfrit's sister Lucrezie has been married these five years and counting. She talks mostly about babies and the price of alum. Whereas Tanfrit, when she's not getting lost in the middle of speaking or looking at things that aren't there, has the best ideas. Sometimes her ideas are stories, sometimes they're fabric patterns, and sometimes they're both. Tanfrit's family's workshop makes some grand tapestries, and Suzen first learned the stories of Medea's dragons and Penelope's loom from her. But the bulk of their trade is in cheaper fabric, linen printed with designs reminiscent of the expensive Italian velvets. Tanfrit has a knack for seeing the effect a repeated block will make. She knows where to place the little twists of vines or griffin tails that will bring a customer good fortune, and her family repeat customers.

Tanfrit's botany, on the other hand, is terrible. Suzen pops a chestnut in her mouth and laughs a bit, thinking of all the times she's explained that grape leaves are different from ivy. Suzen has been collecting knowledge on the nature of plants, when to start seedlings and how to store herbs. This has the disadvantage that Lucrezie has begun teasing her about simples and love-potions, between her analyses of her baby's first five words.

That night, in bed, Tanfrit turns on her side, bunching the pillow under her head, and asks, "Could you really make a love potion?"

Suzen says, "Why would I want to?" She can imagine, suddenly, Tanfrit's distant stare as a picture of a maiden pining for love. She doesn't like to think of Tanfrit being underhanded, bringing a glass of wine to some reluctant visitor. She can't really envision who such a man would be. Handsome, blond, young, and surpassedly learned? They've never met anyone like that.

"I was thinking," Tanfrit explains, "that if you could you make a love potion, you could also make a potion to repel love."

"But why would I want _that_? I'm not exactly drowning in suitors, here."

"If your brother found a dowry, somehow? It seems that his business is improving, from his last letter."

It's a chilly night. Suzen shifts toward Tanfrit and the pocket of warmth her body has made, under the blankets. "You're right. I don't want to get married and have lots of boring babies. But I don't think my brother frets much about my welfare, really. And I doubt he would find a groom who cared what I looked like, if he went looking. Docile and skilled at household management, more likely." 

"If he wants docile, it's definitely not going to work out! But you have beautiful eyes."

"Don't be silly. If it were light enough to see anything, you'd realize I have eyes like a cow."

"Soft, like that velvet we saw, with the pomegranates."

"My eyes are not garnet red! The fleurs-de-lis were brown, you know those are different. You are not even _trying._ "

"I am trying to plan for the future," Tanfrit says, serious again.

"I don't think the future should involve me slipping herbs into some poor man's dinner. Anyway, the goal isn't for me not to get married. Or you, for that matter. It's for us to go on living together."

"Truly?" Tanfrit asks.

"Truly!" Suzen isn't sure, actually, how that was ever in doubt. "And invoking luck for an enterprise, that's really your domain, not mine. Can't you make us a weaving, or a quilt?"

"Maybe." Tanfrit sounds intrigued. "With lilies for you, Suzen, and maybe a pattern of knots for me? It's not exactly a business enterprise, or a marriage, but they both invoke a contract, at the beginning of the weaving. I will sketch the pattern and the prayer, tomorrow."

Suzen laces her fingers through Tanfrit's, under the covers. "Do I have to draw the lilies?"

"I promise not to make them cows," Tanfrit says, squeezing her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to John Boswell, whose argument on Roman adoptions sparked this train of thought, and to a thistle, who put my sentences in some sort of order.


End file.
